Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Why do they do that?

Ever wonder what those ticket scanning thingies are really for? The ticket scanners are linked to a system that accounts for every ticket and pass on the mountain. It also tells the ticket checker immediately if that pass is invalid or if fraud is possibly taking place.

The ticket scanning system reports every bit of information you could think of. For example, we can tell how many skiers & snowboarders are at the mountain each day. These are referred to as "skier days." We run reports at the end of the season that tells us how many people we had at the mountain the entire year. We can also see exactly how many Adult, Young Adult, etc tickets are on the mountain at any time. It tells us how certain promotions are working. It tracks how many times people use their season pass or plus card. It can even tell us what you ate for breakfast that day. Ok just kidding, it's not that thorough.

So those scanners are doing more than just checking to see if you paid for your ticket. They're a marketing geek's best friend.